Migration in Sweden: Even Those Born There Can't Speak the Language

In Sweden, one-third of foreign-born residents have such poor Swedish language skills that they are considered unemployable and must rely on welfare. However, statistics show that a majority of elementary school students—though born in Sweden—are learning Swedish only as a second language and are also falling behind linguistically. Multiple factors suggest that segregation and growing up in isolated residential areas contribute significantly to difficulties in mastering the language.

Fotó: PRADEEP DAMBARAGE Forrás: NurPhoto

According to a 2023 OECD report, one in three foreign-born adults in Sweden lacks the reading skills necessary to access information and succeed in the labor market, V4NA reports.

Even Sweden-born migrant children fail to master Swedish (Photo: Mohsen Karimi / AFP)

This means hundreds of thousands of people are excluded from employment and depend on social benefits.

Among those born in Sweden, only 4 percent fall into this category. This includes ethnic Swedes with reading or language acquisition challenges, but the majority who lack sufficient Swedish language skills are typically children of migrants. Data from Skolverket (Sweden’s National Agency for Education) show that Swedish as a Second Language (SVA) is no longer mainly taught to recent arrivals. The trend is moving in the wrong direction, as more children born in Sweden are lacking the Swedish language proficiency needed to succeed in society.

In 2019–2020, 40% of SVA students were born in Sweden. Five years later, in the 2024–2025 school year, that share has risen to 53%.

They Still Get By

One likely cause for why many Sweden-born children still require SVA education is increasing housing segregation. In so-called “vulnerable areas,” where the majority of residents are of foreign origin, it is often possible to get by without knowing Swedish.

Children growing up in such environments are therefore not exposed to the same linguistic conditions as others, even though they were born in the country. However, Radda Barnen (Save the Children), which raised attention to this issue, holds a different view, according to Swedish news outlet Samnytt. In their view, the number of Swedish-born students with insufficient Swedish is not increasing. Instead, they argue that schools are mistakenly placing students with immigrant backgrounds into SVA classes, even if they speak Swedish fluently.

The organization does not explain why schools would do this, but Radda Barnen concludes that such misclassification reinforces these students’ negative development in a discriminatory way and hinders them from reaching their full language potential.

However, statistics over the past five years show clear negative trends.

Proportion of Swedish-born students in SVA classes:

2019/20: 40%
2020/21: 42%
2021/22: 44%
2022/23: 46%
2023/24: 49%
2024/25: 53%
These developments suggest that language development issues are not improving within certain groups — in fact, they are deteriorating.

Lack of Language Proficiency Is a Problem Throughout Western Europe

As V4NA previously reported, in response to an unprecedented influx of school-aged asylum seekers, Austrian Education Minister Christoph Wiederkehr announced a six-month orientation course for newly arrived children and teens. Many of them have never attended school before and not only do they not speak German — in many cases, they cannot read, write, or count. According to the Freedom Party (FPO), however, this is merely treating the symptoms.

Under the new system, children first attend a six-month orientation class where they learn basic German to help with communication, essential school skills such as writing, using scissors, and classroom etiquette, along with core societal values like respect, equality, and tolerance.

Earlier, Magyar Nemzet also reported that integration is not going well in Austria either. In Vienna and the agglomeration, 70% of schoolchildren have weak to no proficiency in German.

Cover photo: The Swedish flag (Photo: AFP)